Advisory Board Members

The Give A Scan® Advisory Board will set the data collection priorities and goals for the program. The Board will also review the program and set additional guidelines as required to save lives and protect the identity of the donors.

Rick Avila, M.S. is the Senior Director of Healthcare Solutions at Kitware, Inc. and has extensive experience leading research on the computational analysis of medical images. Mr. Avila received an M.S. in Computer Science from SUNY Stony Brook in 1992 specializing in 3D biomedical imaging and visualization. He has led numerous research and development initiatives in several academic and commercial settings including Howard Hughes Medical Institute and GE Global Research. He has placed an emphasis on the development of improved methods for early lung cancer management, including the development of computer aided detection systems, computer-assisted needle biopsy methods, and quantitative lung cancer therapy assessment algorithms. He has consistently supported and contributed to open source biomedical imaging projects for over 18 years including the co-authorship of the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) textbook and software toolkit, a widely adopted open source toolkit for data visualization.

Gail Matthews, the mother of two sons and grandmother of six, and a lung cancer survivor, is an active Lung Cancer Alliance advocate since 2006. A former freelance writer and Young Adult columnist for the Boston Globe, Hartford Times and Christian Science Monitor, she helped her husband co-found College Marketing Group, Inc., which revolutionized how publishers market books. She is the author of a recently published book, Did I Die, on maintaining quality of life while handling the challenges of Alzheimer’s. A lifelong community service volunteer, organizer and a leader in anti-smoking and cancer detection efforts, she is past President of a Massachusetts Heart Association Chapter, the New London, NH Love Lights a Tree, and founder of the New London Hospital Mammography Fund for Women in Need in NH which now in its 20th year has served over 1800 women. In 1999, she founded and chaired Women Who Make a Difference for the Lake Sunapee Visiting Nurse and Hospice Pediatric Services and launched the first Lahey Clinic Nurses Appreciation Fund in Burlington, Massachusetts. After bouts with lung cancer in 2000 and 2003, Matthews, who never smoked, became a determined advocate for raising public awareness and funding for research. Recognizing the need to aggressively address the politics of lung cancer as well, she joined with the Lung Cancer Alliance and held the first Crystal Ball in Boston in 2006.

Jane Reese-Coulbourne, M.S. ChE., is the Executive Director of the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA (Foundation). Created by Congress, the Foundation supports the mission of the FDA by identifying, funding, and supporting public private partnerships and projects that will provide the highest caliber science and technology, to enhance the safety and effectiveness of FDA regulated products. Ms. Reese-Coulbourne’s background includes experience in patient advocacy, industry and government. As an employee of the Procter & Gamble Company for more than 10 years, she worked in production operations, chemical engineering, government regulation, new technology and product/brand start-ups. Later working with other Fortune 500 companies, she consulted in strategic planning, reengineering/restructuring, new technology plans and start-ups, and total quality management in unionized manufacturing and utility operations. Her diagnosis of breast cancer led to her interest in health research and patient advocacy, serving as Executive Vice President of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, and then as a consultant to the Director of the National Cancer Institute (NIH), as well as to leaders in not-for-profit advocacy organizations, foundations, and biotechnology /pharmaceutical companies.

Reese-Coulbourne holds a BS in Chemistry from the University of Mary Washington and an MS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Virginia.

Daniel C. Sullivan, M.D. is Professor and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Radiology at Duke University Medical Center, and Co-Director of the Radiation Oncology and Imaging Program for the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center (DCCC). He is also Science Adviser to the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). He completed radiology residency and nuclear medicine fellowship in 1977 at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He was in academic radiology for 20 years, holding faculty appointments at Yale University Medical Center, Duke University Medical Center, and University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, before joining the National Cancer Institute at NIH in 1997. His areas of clinical and research expertise are in nuclear medicine and oncologic imaging. From 1997 to 2007 Dr. Sullivan was Associate Director in the Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and Head of the Cancer Imaging Program (CIP) at NCI. Dr. Sullivan returned to Duke in 2007 where his current activities focus on improving the use of imaging as a biomarker in clinical trials and facilitating translational research involving new and established imaging methods. In his role with the RSNA Dr. Sullivan coordinates a range of national and international activities related to evaluating and validating imaging methods as biomarkers in clinical research.

David Yankelevitz, M.D. graduated from Downstate Medical Center in 1981. He went on to complete residencies in Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, and subsequently did a fellowship in Thoracic Imaging at The New York Presbyterian Hospital. Since his fellowship, he worked at Weill Medical College until 2010 when he joined the Mount Sinai Medical Center. His main academic interest is the early diagnosis and evaluation of treatment response for lung cancer. He was one of the initiators of the I-ELCAP lung cancer screening study, which now has enrolled over 50,000 people in eight countries worldwide. He has also been part of a team that develops software for computer aided diagnosis. He has been Principal Investigator on 4 NCI grants and co-author of over 200 articles and book chapters. He has trained 14 research fellows in Thoracic imaging. On the clinical side, his main area of interest has been fine needle aspiration of lung nodules and he has developed one of the largest practices in the United States.